


After They Fell

by Demoiselle_Chicanerie



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Charcoal, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Multi, Pigeons, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-06 23:02:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17948831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demoiselle_Chicanerie/pseuds/Demoiselle_Chicanerie
Summary: A series of one-shots depicting the struggles of those left behind by the Friends of the ABC after their deaths at the barricades. From a heartbroken sister who discovers a part of her brother that she never saw before, written in charcoal on a ruined wall, to a bereaved father who only wanted his son to return the love he felt for him. A desperate woman who never found out the truth behind her lover's disappearance, a survivor torturously reliving his trauma through nightmares. A grief that can't be spoken, a pain that goes on and on.





	1. He Was A Marble Statue

Ever since tenderest childhood, Monsieur Enjolras Sr.’s boy had been… how to put it?

Different. Distant. Never quite there.

He had been a beautiful, healthy boy. Loud, too. As a baby he shrieked almost continuously. He didn’t begin to speak till the age of two, and never said much even after that.

For instance, three words he had never heard from his son were: _Je t’aime, papa._

Words he’s never stopped yearning to hear.

The gentleman sits shakily on a bench. The hair around his temples has gone gray in the space of the week that has slid by since his son’s sudden and violent (but, if he is to be the most brutally honest, not truly unexpected) death. His eyelids begin to burn with the warning of incoming tears.

Why has Gabriel always pushed him away? Why did he not leave him, if not a spoken testament of some secret dormant love for him, at least a note? A word? Let it never be known how frantically he has searched through the few belongings (mostly books and political treatises) that his son left behind, to find anything, some scrap of paper emblazoned with those precious, inaccessible words. Oh, for something to reassure his bleeding heart that his unending love had, in fact, been returned somehow. But his son was a stone statue, his blue eyes carved from the coldest of marble. And in his heart of hearts, monsieur Enjolras had known there would be none.

It was hot, so bloody hot in his black mourning jacket. The sky, the silence were closing in, pressing in on him like quicksand on a drowning man. It had been hot then too, there was a bored-looking priest and loud birds overhead. He had allowed only a small number of relatives at the funeral… it had just seemed right that way…

An audible sob shakes his shoulders. He covers his eyes as the tears trace their warm trail down his unshaven cheeks.


	2. Fly Away

A little boy in clearly old, but tolerably clean clothes is knocking on the door of an apartment. The door swings open of its own accord, so the boy assumes monsieur Combeferre is home and waiting for him. He bashfully enters, swinging a bird-cage in his little hands.

  
The kind young medicine student has promised to see what the matter was with his pigeon, Caro (so named for the diamond-shaped splash of white on his forehead). Caro has been sick, he sleeps all day, his grey feathers fluffed up around him and his little soft head sunk into his shoulders. 

But the only person in the apartment is a middle-aged man in a black jacket and waistcoat. His hair is long and messy, his eyes red. He is gathering monsieur Combeferre’s things into a leather suitcase.

Where is this man leaving? Is monsieur Combeferre moving away? He gathers up his courage and taps the man on the elbow. He swiftly turns to face the boy, who instantly sees a family resemblance in his grief-twisted face.

“What do you want? Who are you?” says the man. _Is he monsieur’s father, perhaps?_

“Pardon me, sir, do you know where monsieur Combeferre has gone?” the boy holds the bird-cage aloft. “He promised to take a look at Caro.”

The man’s hard, red eyes soften. “He is home.”

Seeing the instant confusion in the boy’s eyes he adds, in a voice which is scarcely a whisper:

“His true home.”

__He looks ready to cry again, only all his tears have already been spent._ _

“Well, when will he be back?” he hopefully asks.

And the second he does, he realizes his mistake.

The man turns away. “My boy…” he tilts his head upwards and shields his eyes with his hand. “Please leave now. And that thing, that bird, forget it. It’s as good as gone.”

 

 


	3. Mademoiselle Mireille

All Mireille’s tears have been spent. Now she is left with nothing but a dull, pounding headache, and the ghosts of the gunshots still ringing in her ears.

She was at the barricades too. None of Courfeyrac’s pleas would keep her away. 

She remembers thinking how different the sound of the bullets is from how she imagined it. In her head, it was as a thunderbolt from the heavens, the mighty hand of God banishing villains back whence they came. In reality, it was a kind of “pooft pooft, pew pew” as it ricocheted off their barricade. And after hours and hours of it, she finally covered her ears and screamed like a girl. She was to repeat that scream many more times that sweltering June night.

 _ _He was going to marry me__.

The same six words repeat themselves over and over again in her mind as she aimlessly strolls the eerily empty streets. She has no time for tears, she constantly tries to banish their echoes from her head, but she can’t keep it up. The pain has exhausted her, banished all youthful energy. She feels like she’s fallen into a pit of darkness from which she will never rise again.

Again and again, the vision of his beautiful brown eyes filling with shock…

The last emotion they would ever hold before the light fled from them.

She weakly shakes her head. She cannot dwell on this, not now, not again. It will drive her mad.

Suddenly the bloodstained, gunpowder-smelling images are replaced by a new thought, one that makes her sick to her stomach and stops her in her tracks.

What is she now? Not a virgin and not a wife. She knows it is selfish to think this, but who will want her now? She is almost past the age girls get married, but she'd never cared up

until now because soon she was to be Mme. Courfeyrac. She was secure and happy.

Well, she can forget about that now.


	4. Charcoal on a Ruined Wall

FOR MY SISTER, MARGUERITE

 

IF ANYONE HAS EVER DESERVED HAPPINESS ITS YOU

I KNOW THAT I HAVE BEEN MAKING YOU SAD ALL MY LIFE

AND YET YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN LOVING AND FORGIVING SO FORGIVE ME THIS ONE LAST TIME

I SLEEP HERE

AND I HOPE I NEVER WAKE UP.

 

 ** _ ** _R_**_**  
  
In tiny capital letters, except the R that is a little larger than the others, this message is inscribed on the wall of the ruined Corinthe. Underneath it is a charcoal drawing of a young woman with a tall forehead, thick eyebrows, big eyes and wavy hair pulled into a bun. She feels another torrent of tears building up within her, ready to burst out; that young woman is her. With only a few lines he has captured her likeness so well.

The same bit of charcoal has written below this:

 

PAIN NEVER ENDS, BUT YOU MADE ME FORGET IT A LITTLE

 

The floor is littered with plaster and shards of broken glass. The building is so destroyed as to never be used again, so nobody has bothered to wipe the blood under the window. Her arms tremble and her insides churn because she knows whose it is.

A stick of charcoal crunches under Marguerite Grantaire’s foot as she sinks to the ground.  
__He’d lost pleasure in life a long time ago.__

She hears footsteps in the rubble, behind her. She turns to see who has intruded upon her suffering.

It is a pale young man with an arm in a sling. He looks strangely - _wobbly_ , that is the right word, as if finally entering convalescence after a long and lasting illness. The tip of a scar is slightly visible on his forehead, trailing into a thick mass of wavy black hair. He has the air of having been wearing mourning for years.

He takes a few limping steps towards her. Silent, just as she is. Marguerite has neither desire nor need for words- her brother’s are the only ones she can think of now.

The young stranger stands beside her and directs her gaze towards yet another inscription, larger and further along the wall: THE ONLY CERTAINTY IN LIFE IS A FULL GLASS - **_**_R_**_**. Below it there is a drawing of a curly-headed man with blushing cheeks and a beer in hand. She instantly recognizes it as a self-portrait. He limps to the opposing wall and shows her another - a rude poem about the owner of the cafe, Mother Hucheloup. Both are signed with the flourishing **_**_R_**_**  she knows so well.

Marguerite almost smiles and the weak young man sees this. He lifts a shaky finger to call her attention again and points to something else written in the far corner of the wall. Marguerite Grantaire lifts her grief-weary eyes and sees the words:

LIFE IS HELL

SO YOU HAVE TO REALLY HOLD ON

TO THE PARTS THAT AREN’T

 

**_**_R_ ** _ **

__

 


	5. Hearts Beat As One

Valerie Prouvaire had always loved poetry. Her husband had laughed at the ideas for names she came up with for their child: Cordelie, Calypso, Murielle and the like, if it was a girl; Theodose, Percival, Henri if it were to be a boy. Fanciful names that stirred the imagination. Romantic names. 

In the end she’d had to settle with the more practical Jean.  


Growing up, the little Jean Percival Prouvaire had learned to share her love of beauty and melancholy. They’d sat together watching the sunsets till the pink clouds gave way to stars. She’d showed him the constellations and told him the legends behind them. Read to him of the Gods of Olympus. His favorite story was that of Pollux and Castor, the two brothers whose love was stronger than death. (Her husband disapproved of such “pagan pageantry”, but she didn’t care.)

He’d wanted their only son and, therefore, sole heir to the family fortune to study law, like any respectable gentleman should. Jean, or Jehan as he was beginning to sign himself, struggled to memorize the endless fine points of the law, the rules and regulations, but he nevertheless studied continuously, desperate to please his father. Eventually he made himself ill with the exertion.

The doctors recommended that he return to the countryside. Walking with his mother through the waist-high weeds in the meadows and silently watching the clouds gradually drove the illness away, but an incurable sadness had remained. It made him stoop and tremble and walk with smaller, hesitant steps.

He was a disappointment.

Mr. Prouvaire Sr. ordered him to return to Paris and continue his studies, but Valerie persuaded him to abandon the notion of Jean Prouvaire as a lawyer. The boy was too much of a dreamer, his heart too wild. His head was not made to wear a wig, but a crown of flowers.

Jehan studied languages and philosophy and literature, and finally felt free. The letters she received from him were exuberant and never shorter than five pages, even during exam season. Sometimes he sent her the final result of some poem he’d been working on, and nothing made her heart soar higher with joy than this.

He was young, beautiful, wistful, intelligent. He was her son, and the only thing that her husband had not taken from her, made his own, and slowly destroyed. From his first, rose-tinted years he had clung to her and cowered from his father.

He had been her whole life. No other words sufficed.

From the day she heard the news of his violent death, her soul had taken flight, her body still moving through the land of the living, but in the way the husks of newly threshed wheat float on the wind, dead and empty. Everyone who saw her after that whispered that Valerie Prouvaire was not long for this world.

Indeed they were right. A slow-burning fever took her two weeks later.

Their souls, mother and son, were alike, their hearts beat as one.

And the bullet that had stopped his had killed them both.

 


	6. He Never Said Goodbye

There is a beautiful girl running through the streets of the Parisian Student’s Quarter. Passersby stare as she dashes past them, the rims of her eyelids red with held-back tears, her hair coming undone, her small white hands balled into fists.

She finally stops at a small but elegant-looking boarding house in the very center of the Quarter, pries the door open and lets herself in. The landlady knows her well; and even had she not, the girl doesn’t care.

The room she is looking for is right on the bottom floor, and so she charges towards it without breaking pace. Leaning against the door-frame she pauses to get her bearings, wipes her forehead which glistens with sweat from her long run, and breathes heavily. Then she knocks on the door, quietly at first.

There is no answer.

She knows there is something amiss; her lover has been “not home” for weeks now. The thought makes her angry and she wishes she could stamp her foot and shout, but instead tears swim before her eyes and make her dizzy.

“Bahorel?” she asks. “My dear, please. You have been ghosting me all week. What is the matter, why are you ignoring me?” she pauses, and a shadow of a notion whispers something in her mind, something she does not want to hear, to accept. The smell of old furniture in the streets, the sounds of gunfire. But no, she will not accept it. It cannot be.

Her Bahorel, with his strong arms and his sincere smile, would never, _ _could never ...__

...die...?

The girl bites her lip and carries on, with words she has rehearsed since leaving home, but which sound hollow and empty to her now.

“At least tell me what it is. Is it my laugh? I know it’s annoying.”

She breathes deeply and coats the heavy door with a barrage of fists. It hurts, and she soon stops, sucking her knuckles which are bruised and raw.

A sharp sob escapes her. “Please,” she squeaks. “Anything! Just say one _ _-__  give me __one__  word, and-and I’ll go away! Anything! Just…” she sobs again and slides to the floor. “Just say goodbye.”


	7. To Let

Feuilly is an orphan and has no relatives. No one to ever come knocking at his door except his enraged landlord.

For a week now, whenever he comes asking for the rent, the young scamp just so happens to not be home.

Well, now he’s being officially kicked out. He can stay “not home”.

The landlord storms up to Feuilly’s garret-room with a wooden crate in his hands. The kid was poor, it’ll probably be enough to fit everything. He unlocks the door and stomps inside.

The first thing he lays eyes on is an envelope on the table. With his name on it. The landlord pauses, opens the envelope and reads,  
 _  
__June 3_ _rd_ _, 1832_

__

__Dear monsieur Lepin,_ _

__

__If I have not returned tonight you may know I never will.__ _ _  
____Please sell my books and give the money to the poor.__ _ _  
__ _ _  
____Your tenant,__

 _ _Feuilly__  
  
Lepin returns the letter to its envelope, which he absentmindedly stuffs in his pocket. His eyes come to rest on a small, home-made shelf jutting from the wall, on which rest no more than six volumes. They are all about distant countries, some with names he’s never heard and can’t for the life of him pronounce. “‘Sell my books’?” he mutters. “Sorry kid, ain’t nobody got time for that.”

He piles the books into his crate, along with some clothes, a small letter-opener amongst a great deal of old letters, a couple of cockades with the sewing coming undone and a few half-finished fans. Worthless, everything. A real waste of time to even try and get a price for them over at the pawnshop.

He throws the box out onto the street and hangs a “TO LET” sign in the window.

 

 


	8. Daughter of None, Prison of Nightmares

The whine of bullets seems to have fallen silent. He is tired. And wet. He can’t tell if it was blood or sweat or tears or- oh, it’s raining now? He doesn’t care. There is a girl in his arms. He’s never held a girl as closely as this before. This is wrong. He can hear her saying something, in her husky, rasping drawl, but her voice sounds like it’s coming from afar. From heaven. Indeed Marius can tell that she’s dying. He has to stop this somehow, put an end to it. He doesn’t want… this? She’s in his arms and dying? Dying in the street? The injustice wells up inside him and refuses to spill out in the form of tears. He can’t.

She says she’s happy because she is finally in his arms.

He’s dizzy and confused. Everything is wrong, backwards. He should be weeping or something but his heart seems to have turned to stone. He’s simply hot. He hates everything. This girl in his arms is dying and he can’t stop the bleeding, she took a bullet for him. There’s blood everywhere. Everything is hot and sticky and wet.

She wants him to kiss her once she’s dead. This is so wrong. His mind is muddled. No, she can’t die, because he doesn’t want her to and that’s just not the way it should be.

She was a little bit in love with him. She’s dead now. He kisses her forehead, still in a daze.

It’s so hot. So dark. Everything around him is dark. He feels like a cloud is descending around him. It’s as black as ink and it’s everywhere. He’s covered in blood. He needs to sleep. Everything is hard, everything is pushing him away, pushing him into himself, he is going to implode, there is screaming somewhere very, very far away, underwater maybe? But he’s alone and everything hurts and he’s drowning in the dark, and her voice is everywhere, this suffering girl, daughter of none yet loving all, he can hear her and it’s so loud. He wants it to go away, he wants everything to go away. Everything is pushing him into himself and he’s going to implode and he’s screaming and everything is screaming and-

“Marius, what’s wrong, what’s going on?” Cosette is shaking him by the shoulder. He’s awake. It’s quiet except for him. He’s gasping for breath. The sheets are soaked, he hopes it’s not what he thinks. Suddenly a wave of fear seizes him again. His Cosette is not here, he’s alone, her voice is coming from somewhere else, there’s a hand on his shoulder? He smacks it away and jumps out of bed.

“Go away! Go away!” he tries to scream but all that comes out is a hoarse whisper. “Everything is horrible, everything hurts…” he cowers in a corner of the room and hugs himself.

He’s still wet and sticky. The disgust overwhelms him and brings him back to reality. He’s a grown man, how can he have… wet the bed?

Slowly everything comes back into focus, with Cosette’s voice at the front of it all. “Marius, calm down. It’s only me. I’m your wife. I’m right here. And I am not going away.”

“I’m sorry, dearest. It was only a dream, I think. I was… I was screaming, wasn’t I?” he manages to croak out.

“Yes, you were… it must have been a horrible dream?”

He is silent.

“You don’t have to tell me about it, darling. Just, um…” she bites her lip, fearful of embarrassing him. “Can you get out of those nightclothes, darling? You’ll feel so much better.”

He gasps a quick __thank you__  as she throws him his houserobe to wear while she sends the servants - Oh God, they must have heard him too and come to see what all the commotion was about - to bring towels and hot water, and sheets and nightclothes.

He is here, alive and safe. Éponine is dead. He owes her his life and it’s a debt he can never repay and that makes him want to scream.

Nothing remains of the barricades but nightmares, and he is their prisoner. He will never escape their grasp. This is a prison of the mind. He is alone in his mind, where nobody can join him, nobody can save him.

Marius closes his eyes and clamps his teeth shut to keep from screaming again.


	9. And So It All Ends

Musichetta knew it couldn’t last, wouldn’t last forever.

Men can be proud, and useless, and cruel, and she knows that better than anyone else. What luck, what fortune, what unbelievably bizarre bliss would come of finding not one, but two, that weren’t?

Joly’s smile lit up the room and made her smile too, no matter how mad she might have been at his hypochondriasis, or obsession with tidiness, or his habit of feeding birds that came in and dirtied the carpet. Bossuet’s lack of luck and charming ability to brush it off and laugh at it brought out a motherly streak in her that she hadn’t known she had - making her want to hug him and, if he had had any, stroke his hair. (Also he was excellent in bed, but that was not appropriate to mention at the funeral. Not that she’s been invited anyway.)

These boys had meant everything to her. She has loved them both in every way possible. Not only as a passionate lover, but as a close friend, a helpful sister, even a mother. They had come to define her. She was the crazy girl who lives with two men, boils strange spiced teas and reads the cards. 

She is shuffling them now. One falls out as she listlessly shuffles through her pack. She picks it up.

The Wheel of Fortune.

She wants to tear it up and throw it out the window. 

It is the same card she had drawn on that fateful day. With it, the sound of grandmother’s voice teaching her about it suddenly fills her ears like a faraway echo: __The Wheel of Fortune is a card with many meanings indeed, my dear, and one never knows which, truly one never knows. A turning, one might say. A warning that everything can and will change. Quick as a hawk diving for its prey, silent as the flap of a butterfly’s wings. Those who suffer, those who languish, the downtrodden, the despaired, will soar high. There will be courage and laughter and light. But they may also come crashing down, spinning low on the ever-turning wheel, and break their necks.__   

The boys, sparkling with excitement (and wine, probably), took it to mean exactly what they’d wanted it to - that everything would change. The downtrodden would rise, the high and mighty would fall. But they were wrong. __The cards do not foretell, rather they warn.__  

And indeed, as they have shown, everything has changed. Only not how they’d expected. Where once there was contentment and bliss, there is now nothing but a cold and empty room that she can no longer pay for.  

The irony wants to swallow Musichetta up in its bitter iron jaws.

But she won’t have it. She will see herself rise again, she will bite the bullet, she will live.

Musichetta knew it couldn’t last forever.

The cards never lie.

 


End file.
